Dynamical methods for evaluating the time-dependent unfolding of social coordination in children with autism

Paula Fitzpatrick, Rachel Diorio, Michael J. Richardson, R. C. Schmidt

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

67 Citations (Scopus)
74 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) suffer from numerous impairments in social interaction that affect both their mental and bodily coordination with others. We explored here whether interpersonal motor coordination may be an important key for understanding the profound social problems of children with ASD. We employed a set of experimental techniques to evaluate not only traditional cognitive measures of social competence but also the dynamical structure of social coordination by using dynamical measures of social motor coordination and analyzing the time series records of behavior. Preliminary findings suggest that children with ASD were equivalent to typically developing children on many social performance outcome measures. However, significant relationships were found between cognitive social measures (e.g., intentionality) and dynamical social motor measures. In addition, we found that more perceptually-based measures of social coordination were not associated with social motor coordination. These findings suggest that social coordination may not be a unitary construct and point to the promise of this multi-method and process-oriented approach to analyzing social coordination as an important pathway for understanding ASD-specific social deficits.
Original languageEnglish
Article number21
Pages (from-to)1-13
Number of pages13
JournalFrontiers in Integrative Neuroscience
Volume7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Copyright the Author(s) 2013. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

Keywords

  • autism spectrum disorders
  • dynamics
  • social coordination
  • social competence
  • time series analyses

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Dynamical methods for evaluating the time-dependent unfolding of social coordination in children with autism'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this